https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzSxvyX3QfA

From the musical Kismet.
The melody is from the opera "Prince Igor".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3qSNHela0c

I saw this at the AMV competition and was really impressed by the image-interpolation technique used to create this. The source material has a much lower framerate.

Finished Rocko's Modern Life, the SNES action game based on the '90s Nickelodeon cartoon.

I remember watching this cartoon thinking was pretty funny while also kind of gross because when I was little, I didn't like seeing eating of hearts, brains, etc. It looked really disturbing. Don't know if I'd find it gross now? Apparently the show also had lots of innuendos which had to have gone totally over my head at the time since I don't recall that.

The video game inspired by the cartoon is essentially escort mission genre. There are a bunch of puzzles and obstacles, and you must guide your silly dog Spunky to the goal (golden fire hydrant) at the end of each level.

Spunky moves indiscriminately, autonomously forward- but you can make him switch directions or pause in one spot for a short time, and manipulate the environment to affect where he goes. The game allows you to pause and view the entire map if you want, so you can plot out a course of which items and environmental features to use. Overall difficulty I think is low-med.

The environments and sprites are pretty sizable and visually consistent with the cartoon. There are lots of frames of animation in things. The game makes use of wavefile sound (actual voice clips). I don't have rosy nostalgia goggles for this cartoon, I don't have them for this game either, so it was just okay.

The game is not very long or difficult- I played basically the entire thing while on a Skype call with my mom. Now I'm finally running out of SNES games not-yet-beaten.

Maybe it's time to suck it up and get Ringed City.

A technical problem-

Need to play 3-player SNES game on emulator with two other people across the internet. (This is on a game which supports multi-tap).

Option #1: ZSNES netplay. Seemed appealing at first because I used it before with two-player games, with some success.
Why it doesn't work: No connectivity between three machines. Limit is two.

Option #2: Snes9x netplay. Seemed okay at first because it supports 3+ machines (or supposedly, however many you want as spectators). And, in some ways isn't as brittle as ZSNES's netplay.
Why it doesn't work: Horribly unsable, and if anything goes remotely out of sync, rather than recover it will reset the game for everyone. There are supposed to be syncing options other than resetting but those don't work, only resetting does. The problem is serious enough for it to be unplayable.

Option #3: Wii Virtual console. Seemed appealing as this game is really on VC.
Why it doesn't work: It won't let you play with other people over the Internet, with others in your Wii friends list as you might expect, only local (replicating the original). What a lazy port... It would have been such an easy grab of $10 x 3 dollars in this case.

Option #4: Use some random reliable screen sharing program to share the screen. (e.g., Skype)
Why it's not great: Only one player can play at a time.

It's utterly pathetic that #4 is the best option.

Does anyone have any other suggestions? If I absolutely have to use #4, maybe I can use some kind of stripped-down remote assistance to share out some keyboard input.

What to do?

***This has been duplicated from its original social media post and had its comments removed.***

Finished Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest for SNES.

Released around the same time as Final Fantasy V, but it is a way lower level of technical achievement compared to the mainline Final Fantasy games from that time. It has very tiny sprites with two-frame animations, not very many maps. In terms of gameplay there are some things to like: no random encounters, and your character can jump and use a weapon to interact with the environment. The plot is kind of thin and forgettible.

Everything made sense once I read about the origins of this game. Apparently, this was meant to be an introduction of Final Fantasy to a wide western audience, including children, since in the late 80s, early 90s console RPGs had yet to gain as much traction in the west as they did in Japan. That requirement meant streamlining all the combat and equipment system, and having something more action-oriented in the map aside from just walking around. And, having characters that are simpler. They further reduced the difficulty and grind by making it so you can save anywhere, rather than fixed save points, and all battles can be re-tried.

FFMQ has one really good thing: the soundtrack. Unlike the mainline Final Fantasies from around that time, it was not composed by Nobuo Uematsu. So the music feels distinctly different. Less anime-ish and more old-live-action-movie-ish. It's almost at the point where a game like this does not deserve a soundtrack this good.

Some people call FFMQ the "worst Final Fantasy". Maybe it is but it is not worse than Final Fantasy XIII.

favorite music

Japan VS USA box art

I made this as part of a costume project. You guessed it, the Lagoon starting equipment.

I hope the con folks will be able to peacebond these

I have to admire what they could and couldn't do with video game chiptunes.
E.g., to go from this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YK1rsQsDo_Q

to this:

Like I wonder if it breaks some poor composer's heart to have their amazing masterpiece work, confined to a representation in a 30-second loop with 64kb of memory and 8 midi channels. In context, good soundtracks tend to stay good soundtracks, even if chiptunes lose so many details and subtle aspects of the arrangement. I suspect that part of the job of BGM composers back then was to create songs that could still sound good on that form factor.

Got all size+speed optimization challenges in Human Resource Machine!
Some of them are HARD.
I have new appreciation for being able to std::swap (in one expression), or use, like, any literals
And the ending. The reward is a creepy cutscene...

The robo-dialers have gotten really sophisticated.

Ring ring.

Answer phone

Them: Hi!

Me: Hello?

(Silence)

Them: Oh-! (slightly flustered, like a real person who dials a wrong number, or a person calling on behalf of a business they're working for but they're having sort of an off-day) I was just having a problem with my husband. Um- (Couple seconds goes by while the 'person' 'collects themselves') We noticed you staying at one of our resorts recently, and we wanted to let you know about-

Me: I'm sorry this is a bad time.

Them: (Totally unfazed, clearly a robot) -a limited-time promotion where-

Just hung up.

Shouldn't this be illegal?